Jasim tossed aside the shirt in a gesture of fuming impatience. ‘I don’t
have time for such self-indulgence. My father is very ill. I am doing what I can to lighten the burden of his duties, but if I am not available he will try to do too much. He is not strong enough to survive another heart attack.’
The anger that she could see repeatedly bubbling up in him was making Elinor feel uneasy, and the atmosphere was explosive. ‘Wouldn’t he listen to your advice?’
‘Obstinacy is a family trait.’ Jasim had fallen still and outrage lightened his gaze to scornful accusing gold while he studied her. ‘While lying appears to be your fatal flaw and I must be honest—I cannot stand the prospect of living with a liar because it means that you cannot be trusted.’
‘Lying?’ Elinor repeated in complete bewilderment. ‘What are you accusing me of lying about?’
‘I checked out your stupid story about a romance between Murad and your late mother. My father had not the slightest idea what I was talking about!’ Jasim informed her in a savage undertone. ‘My brother had never approached him with a request to marry anyone before he agreed to marry Yaminah.’
Elinor was astonished by that statement. ‘But that’s not possible. I mean, my mother told me about what happened. It was a major event in her life and she had no reason to lie—’
‘You’re the liar,’ Jasim fired back at her with harsh emphasis. ‘Why can’t you just admit the truth? Murad gave you that diamond ring because you had a relationship with him!’
‘That’s absolutely not true!’ Elinor hurled back at him.
In the simmering silence, Jasim yanked off his boxers. A lithe, incredibly male figure, his strong, hard body would have drawn any woman’s attention. Elinor’s cheeks were very pink. Even in the midst of a row, she found his sleek bronzed nudity an impossible distraction.
‘If I didn’t know for a fact that you were a virgin when I had you first, I would throw you out of the palace!’ Jasim growled at her, the blaze of his wrath increasing at her refusal to come clean. ‘What sort of a slut accepts a ring of that value from a married man and then, not content with that piece of brazen scheming, jumps into bed with his brother?’
‘Don’t you dare call me a slut!’ Elinor flung at him furiously, stalking into the spacious limestone bathroom in his wake. ‘You’re the one who made all the running in our relationship, not me!’
Jasim switched on the water in the wet room and stepped beneath the refreshing gush. He was disgusted that she had lied to him and that he had had sufficient faith in her unlikely tale to actually broach the subject with his father. Naturally he had wanted to believe her story, for the truth he was facing now was a good deal less acceptable. His wife was a greedy, deceitful and immoral liar, who had used her sexual allure to manipulate his brother. There was nothing to celebrate in that fact and much to be ashamed of.
Even so, he noted without surprise, there was no hint of shame in Elinor’s stance. Glorious red hair framed the pale beauty of her face and her emerald green eyes were bright with umbrage. She was fizzing with impotent rage at his condemnation and the sight in no way cooled his deep abiding anger with her. She had tried to take him for a fool and deserved everything she had coming to her. She needed to understand that it was time to clean up her act. If she did not, she was likely to find life very hard, for he had no intention of tolerating her devious ways.
‘Well, you did make the running,’ Elinor repeated afresh when he failed to respond.
‘You didn’t exactly fight me off, did you? Why would you have done?’ Jasim derided as he washed. ‘I played right into your hands. I was a better bet than Murad because I didn’t have a wife. Of course you were willing to sleep with me!’
‘I can’t believe that you’re insulting me like this—’
‘No?’ Water streaming down his lean bronzed physique, Jasim treated her to a lethal look of contempt. ‘My brother was much softer with women than I will ever be.’
‘You’re supposed to be my husband—are you ever going to behave like one?’ Elinor hissed, green eyes livid with anger.
‘Not while your dishonesty is still fresh in my memory. I want the whole truth from you now,’ Jasim decreed in a tone of steely command. ‘How far did your tempting of my brother go? It must have been pretty intense if he gave you that ring.’
‘You’ve got it all wrong and I’m not answering your stupid demeaning questions.’ Her breasts heaving as she dragged in a deep breath to sustain her struggling lungs, Elinor glowered at him. ‘Nor am I willing to go through some crazy second wedding with you…once was enough!’
‘You’re in the wrong country to issue a threat like that,’ Jasim delivered with chilling bite as he sauntered out of the shower and reached for a towel. ‘Place me in that kind of position and I swear I will tell my father about your sordid flirtation with Murad. If I do there will be no wedding and you will find yourself flying back to London alone.’
Elinor was chilled to the marrow by that warning, for she was in no doubt of how ruthless he could be. ‘You can’t threaten me like that.’
Smouldering dark golden eyes clashed levelly with hers. ‘Don’t tempt me. In Quaram I can do just about anything I want to do, aziz.’
‘Does that include taking a second wife?’ Elinor demanded with stinging scorn, for in the mood he was in she saw no reason to approach the topic with greater tact.
Jasim froze, his smouldering dark golden eyes narrowing and darkening to view her with questioning censure. ‘Is that your idea of a joke?’
‘No, not at all. It was your cousin, Laila, who suggested that you might be hoping for an arrangement like that…’
Jasim lifted his damp dark head high, an expression of incredulous outrage stamped in his lean, darkly handsome features. ‘She would not dare. Only you would have the bravado to subject me to such an offensive piece of salacious prejudice. It is more than a century since anyone in Quaram took more than one wife,’ he spelt out rawly.
‘I am not prejudiced!’ Elinor shot back at him furiously.
Jasim dealt her an unimpressed look and strode out of the bathroom regally, as though he were not wrapped in a towel. Elinor shot after him, unwilling to let the matter lie, even though his shocked reaction was already beginning to make her suspect that she might have fallen headlong into a nasty little trap that Laila had set for her. Having filled her head with melodramatic drivel, Laila had set her loose to either worry herself sick about Jasim’s supposed plans or confront her husband with the issue and deeply offend him.